Yep, it has been as soggy as a frog's bottom on a lily pad this year. Can you grow anything? The look you'd get from a Pacific Northwesterner would cause you to shrink.With a few exceptions like hot weather plants that need more days of sun, this country has adapted all sorts of fruits and veggies into its menu. Just about everything has been bred to do well here, or at least stand a snowball's chance. A few of them might take a little extra nudging along to survive the season, but raised beds, good topsoil and fertilizer perform wonders.Blackberries grow like weeds here. Raspberries, Salmon berries, blueberries and a few others are abundant. Cold crops do well as long as you keep the slugs away.Most dreamers start looking through their seed catalogues in January, but any normal person can go to the local nursery or garden store and begin their selectiion when the seeds and seedlings hit the shelves. The one important rule is to grow enough zuchinni for the entire neighborhood and they will do the same for you. The smell of hot zuchinni bread in the air is mark of a good season.We'll cover wild fish and game another time. The main caution is that they don't grow well in the garden, thoughP.S. Be sure to check out the Pow Wow schedule on the website's first page!

When my editor originally told me he liked my Sheep Eater manuscript story line and was very complimentary, I was thrilled. Then came the "but." He wanted me to perform a big change to the main character to make the story even more interesting. I fussed, fumed and confessed to using a couple of words inappropriate for young eyes and ears. This wasn't only a sea change, it was an ark-worthy flood.Changing the main character would change the book! I had run into the storied struggle of an editor's point of view colliding with an author's creative vision, such as it is. I had to chew on this for quite awhile until I realized it wasn't all about me. My publisher wants to sell my books, too.I have dug in and started back to work. All I have to do is replace good boy stuff with bad boy stuff and voila! His journey will be taking a couple of extra twists that I hadn't anticipated, but nothing insurmountable. His arrogance could even prove to be useful. Remind me to buy a GPS unit. I've found that The Yellow Brick Road does not go in a straight line after all!

It's sort of funny how many friends have asked me how I know anything about the tribes I write about. Most have known me a long time and haven't seen me around many Native Americans on a regular basis. I tend to surprise them when I tell them who I've known or know now that helped me gain some insights into the characters I have written about in my novels. For instance, in my Buffalo Hump novel, much of the Nez Perce character was developed due to knowing a high school friend related to Chief Lawyer. I didn't help him much with tribal customs when we hung out together. In my Hollow Point novel, I blended information from several Salish folks. Some identify with the Suquamish tribe and some less so. Identity is an issue that the Elders try to bridge with the young all the time. That is where my character originated from - that identity struggle.In another manuscript I'm starting on, I came across a young lady who coincidentally is back in Browning, Montana as I'm writing this to make her annual visit to her grandmother. She is half Blackfoot and Browning is the Blackfeet Reservation's main town. She knows people who have stories. I look forward to her return.Beyond personal contacts, I'll bet I've read more information on the various tribes than I have read in any particular subject matter other than Paramedic Certification. The great part is how edifying it is to learn why certain things came to pass in today's world. Many are no different than other cultures' growing pains, but our Indigenous friends often have some unique traditions that most non-Natives don't understand.My goal is to write a good fiction novel and blend in some of the tales and traditions of the tribe I'm focusing on and give the reader a new point of view and, contrary to the rumor mill, I do not use arrows to shoot at targets with character traits emblazoned on them. That would be tacky and risky for anyone standing within 50 yards of me (but a good source for another story!)...

In most places around the country this year, winter has meant deep snow and ice, many times in places that rarely get it. I believe I have the basic reason the Salish folks really liked to use canoes. They are for years like this one that are far above our winter rainfall average. Everything is water logged. Rivers and streams are hard to cross on foot. The wind-whipped waves out on the Puget Sound required a sturdy craft to navigate it.The rain garden I constructed in my back yard at the foot of my hill now has a rain bumper crop. Otherwise the whole yard would be a muddy mess rather than just half of it. March has come in like a very soggy lion and a lot more is due this week. I can certainly understand the need for woven cedar hats in this stuff, lacking umbrellas or blue tarps. It won't be long before the salmon start swimming across the flooded highways down south of us again.Would I like snow any better? You've obviously never driven up or down my driveway when there's an inch on the ground. Rain is better, since I'm on a hill. I'm from a place where there is a lot of snow, but it wasn't icy and people were geared for it. Snow turns to ice quickly here, so people spend a lot of time curling with their cars and trucks. I think Western Washingtonians were the originators of that sport.I do not blame the groundhog for this winter. There's no way he could have seen his shadow in this continual cloud cover. He did his best. There are all sorts of Native American stories and legends about wolves, bears, etc. I wonder if there are any about the groundhog...

Author

My paternal Great Grandfather was full-blood Cherokee and his wife was full-blood Kickapoo. The rest of me is a Euro-mix.I retired from the Fire Department in 2005 and have been writing since 2009. I have four grown kids and a Grandson, plus twin Granddaughters born in January of 2014, which qualifies me for treatment of PTSD, I'm sure!